Why I’m not an atheist

Gracie Bonds Staples (front left), a choir member, participates in her Antioch Baptist Church North candlelight communion service on Sunday, Dec. 21, 2014, in Atlanta. Staples lost her mother in 1973 when she was 15 and her older sister Dianne redeemed yellow top Value stamps for her Christmas gift, a stuffed monkey with a plastic face. CURTIS COMPTON / CCOMPTON@AJC.COM

Posted: 5:00 a.m. Tuesday, March 07, 2017

The more-direct sun of spring has already arrived, the azaleas in my front yard have opened, and green sprigs of Bermuda grass are starting to emerge.

After fall, this is my favorite time of year, when in the words of Tennyson, a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love, and everywhere I look I see God.

Apparently there’s ample evidence pointing overwhelmingly toward the non-existence of God, particularly the non-existence of a loving and all powerful deity, the God that I believe in.

You won’t get any argument from me for or against. I can only say what I believe and why.

I believe that there is one God who created all that there is in all the universe. I believe he sent the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, to be born literally of a virgin to come to earth to save me because He loved me. I believe that unlike me, he lived an absolutely perfect life.